Cloudscape Computing: the Dispersed Matrix as ‘Infinite’ Computing Platform
8 03 2008
As the web moves into a more mature stage of its adolescence, the beginnings of an all-media platform, computing has begun to move to the “cloud” format. Cloudscape computing means that software, files, private accounts and processing power are dispersed over an extensive array of machines across the world.
“The Cloud” is the world wide web, and the nature of cloudscape computing can provide significant, if surprising, returns in security and accessibility. Dispersing, via dedicated encryption, the bits that compose a given file over an array of servers, with some redundancy, can make it more difficult to hack into any actual file or file storage device.
And, where cloudscape storage and computing come into play, there is a genuine motivation for large organizations, or for the pressures of the vast consumer and advertising marketplace, to push for ever more accessibility (wirelessly, in mobile telephony) to online material, which could have a positive effect both in fomenting further innovation, broadening the array of services available and bringing prices down.
Cloudscape computing does have its shortcomings, or its risk areas, but all in all, it is one of the commercial practices most likely to push into new terrain in mobile and wireless web access. With that, however, comes the serious means of market control it may lend to web-based software giants like Google. As always, the freedom of content access, generation and distribution is a paramount concern.
The real change of dynamic in computing connection time and browsing tendencies, comes with the types of services that can be made available by way of dispersed or distributed document and database hosting. More dynamic websites, more graphic-intense visual content, higher processing speeds, software applications that require zero installation and zero hard-disk space, accessible-from-anywhere desktop publishing suites and content-management technologies, are just a few.
Cloudscape computing requires a level of impeccability in encryption and programming that goes beyond what has been required in consumer computing to date. But this demand is also a challenge that will help promote new exploration of the potential benefits of more complex, more flexible, more resilient encryption paradigms.
We will only begin to see real benefits of distributed computing capacity, for the average end-user, when instant document-transfer encryption stands have advanced far beyond what we now enjoy, layered and impromptu in ways that will require one or two orders of magnitude more processing speed (and bandwidth) than is now commonly available.
“Is Virtualization the foundation of SOA?”
Posted [at Judith Hurwitz's Weblog] on February 16, 2008.
I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about virtualization and cloud computing. The more I look at the foundational requirements for virtualization the more I am convinced that there is a close relationship. How can I say this? In the simplest terms, if you think about the fact that the foundation of SOA is a loosely coupled approach. So, if you are going to combine components from various systems into a “virtual application”, how do you maintain state of this entity? While there are many techniques used today for SOA implementations (some are more loosely coupled than others), the reality is that it will come down to virtualization.
Let’s start with a definition.
Virtualization is a technique for abstracting the physical characteristics of computing resources in order to more easily leverage hardware systems, applications, operating systems,networks, graphics, data, or storage so they can be repurposed based on customer need. In addition, in order to virtualize a resource, it is basically put into a “container”. This is the same technique used in the traditional approach to SOA. What makes virtualization important for SOA is the ability to move the presentation and availability of these resources across physical networks and devices. [Full Post]